John turned to the organization of the Papal income, and his success in this direction is notorious. Villani says in his Florentine History[256] that at his death John left a fortune of 25,000,000 florins[257] in coin and jewels. Villani is hostile, but he affirms that he had this information from his brother, who was one of the bankers appointed to appraise the sum. Other chroniclers give different figures. It happens, however, that John's ledgers are still preserved in the Vatican archives, and as in this case they completely refute the anti-Papal chroniclers—a point certainly to be carefully noted by the historian—they have been published.[258] Some of the ledgers are "missing," but there are general statements (tallying with the separate ledgers), and from these it appears that the entire income of the Papacy during the eighteen years of John's Pontificate was about four and a half million florins (or about £120,000 a year), and that the greater part of this was spent on the Italian war. There is an expenditure of nearly three millions under the humorous heading of "Wax, and certain extraordinary expenses," and the items show that the Italian campaign to recover the Papal estates absorbed most of this. At the same time the ledgers do not quite confirm the edifying tradition of John's sober and simple life. His table and cellar cost (in modern terms) nearly £3000 a year; his "wardrobe" nearly £4000 a year: and his officials and staff about £15,000 a year. Immense sums seem to have been given to relatives—there is one item of 72,000 florins paid to his brother Peter for certain estates—and we know that in 1339 he began to build the famous Papal Palace.
In sum, the editors of John's accounts conclude that the Papal treasury would, at his death, have shown a deficit of 90,000 florins but for a loan of half a million from his private purse; and that the total amount left behind by him (besides his valuable library of 1028 volumes, his collection of 329 jewelled rings, etc.) was only about 800,000 florins. It is true that, in spite of the businesslike appearance of the ledgers, we must not take this as a statement of the Pope's entire estate. Vast sums were collected which did not pass through Avignon, but went straight to the Legate in Italy (and possibly elsewhere). Moreover, the "private purse" of the Pope is an interesting and obscure part of his system. It was discovered at his death that he had a secret "little chamber," over one of the corridors, into which a large part of the income went. There are historical indications that he diverted to his private account large sums for military and special political purposes. He did not foresee how Clement VI. would genially dissipate it, with the words: "My predecessors did not know how to live." This account was not entered in books, and we have to be content with the assurance that he left at his death rather less than a million florins in all.
Yet an income of—if we make allowance for the unrecorded sums—something like £200,000 a year, at a time when the patrimonies were mostly alienated, was enormous, and there is no reason to doubt the statement of all historians that it came largely from tainted sources. John's fiscal policy is a stage in the degeneration of the Papacy. Clement IV. had, in 1267, reserved to the Pope the income of the benefices of clerks who died at Rome, and Boniface VIII. had enlarged this by including all who died within a two days' journey of Rome. John extended the law throughout the Church and demanded three years' revenue for each that fell vacant. By his Bull Execrabilis he ordered all clerks (except his cardinals) who held several benefices to select one and surrender the rest to the Apostolic See. He created bishoprics—he made six out of the bishopric of Toulouse—by subdividing actual sees (on the plea, of course, that the duties would be better discharged), and by an astute system of promotions he, when a see fell vacant, contrived to move several men and secure the "first fruits" on their appointments: a vacant archbishopric, for instance, would be filled by a higher bishop, the higher bishopric by a lower bishop, and so on. It was possible to put a complexion of reform on all these measures, but clergy and laity muttered a charge of avarice. Then there were the incomes from kingdoms and duchies (England, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and Spoleto) which owed an annual tribute, the yield of the surviving patrimonies, the taxes on dispensations and grants, and a certain beginning of the sale of indulgences which, unfortunately, we cannot closely ascertain.
John was not wholly immersed in finance and insensible of higher duties. He created universities at Cahors and Perugia, regulated the studies at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris, and even (as we shall see) concerned himself with the state of the East. But the only council we trace under his control (held at St. Ruf, in 1326) was almost entirely concerned with ecclesiastical property and immunities, and his correspondence is, in effect, almost wholly fiscal and political. He greatly enlarged the Rota (or legal and business part of the Curia), and filled it with a cosmopolitan staff of clerks, to deal with this large and lucrative side of his affairs. It is pleaded that the Papacy could not discharge its duties without this wealth and power; and it must seem unfortunate that the acquisition and maintenance of the wealth and power left so little time for the duties they were to enable the Pope to discharge.
Watered by this stream of gold, Avignon flourished. John was generous to his family and his cardinals: palaces began to rise above the lowly roofs of the town: a gay and coloured life filled its streets. A Papal household costing £25,000 a year would of itself make an impression. We know Avignon best in the later and even richer days of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. who followed John. Not far away, even in the days of John, dwelt a writer who was destined to immortality, and he passed scathing criticisms on Avignon. Petrarch is a rhetorician and poet, as well as a fierce opponent of the Avignon Papacy, but one cannot lightly disregard his assurance that Papal Avignon was "Babylon," "a living hell," and "the sink of all vices."[259] He is chiefly describing Avignon under Clement VI., but he says that it is only a change "from bad to worse" since John's days.
An episode that occurred soon after John's elevation is, perhaps, more convincing than Petrarch's fiery rhetoric, since its features were determined in a legal process. Hugues Géraud, a favourite of Clement V., had obtained from that Pope the bishopric of Cahors, paying the Papal tax of a thousand florins for it. He proceeded to make his possession as lucrative as possible and live comfortably on the revenue his clerks extorted for him. John's townsfolk appealed to him, as soon as he settled in Avignon, and he summoned the Bishop to his court. Hugues Géraud sealed the lips of his priests by an oath of silence, but, of course, a Pope could undo that seal, and the inquiry revealed enormities on the part of the Bishop. Toward the close of the inquiry certain men were arrested bringing mysterious packages into the town. They had with them various poisons and certain little wax images concealed in loaves. The Bishop and his chief clerks were at once arrested, and, although the Papal officials used torture to open their lips, the substance of their story seems reliable. Fearful of the issue, Hugues Géraud had applied to a Jew at Toulouse, and to others, for these poisons and wax images. It was proved in court that members of the Papal household, including a cardinal, were bribed to facilitate the poisoning, and that the wax images, which were not effective without the blessing of some prelate, were actually blessed by the Archbishop of Toulouse. The Archbishop pleaded that he had no suspicion of the awful purpose of these images—familiar as they were in the Middle Ages—but he soon fled from Toulouse, and it is conjectured that he had hoped that the death of the Pope would save his diocese (and income) from the threatened dismemberment.[260]
Some of these images had already been smuggled into Avignon and the Bishop and his archpriest had, in the well-known mediæval manner, set up one of them as representative of the Pope's nephew, Cardinal Jacques de Via, and stabbed it in the belly and legs with silver styles, while the wicked Jew repeated the suitable imprecations. John XXII. fully shared the views of his age in regard to these magical practices, and we can imagine how he and others were confirmed in that belief when, in the course of the trial, Jacques de Via sickened and died. The trial came to a speedy conclusion. The Bishop of Cahors was dragged by horses through the town and burned at the stake: his numerous clerical and lay accomplices were adequately punished: and John spurred the Inquisitors to a deadly campaign against magicians throughout the country. Some of the cardinals were involved in this or a similar plot, but John shrewdly disarmed them with gold rather than make powerful enemies.
These details will suffice to make clear the state of the clergy and laity at the close of a century which some writers appraise as one of profound inspiration, and we must go on to consider the large policy which John's wealth was intended to support. The central theme is, once more, the political struggle with the Emperor—the undying curse which temporal power had brought with it—but we cannot understand this aright unless we first regard a spiritual struggle of great interest.
The followers of Francis of Assisi had branched into the customary parties of rigourists and liberals. On the one hand were the great body of the friars, living in large comfortable monasteries, raising a stupendously rich church over the bones of their ascetic founder. On the other hand were the faithful minority, the genuinely ascetic, casting withering reproaches on the liberals, assimilating much of the mystic and—we may justly say—protestant feeling which was growing in Europe. There were bloody conflicts as well as highly seasoned arguments. The "Spirituals" and "Fratricelli" could not but regard the wealth and sensuality of the higher clergy as an apostasy from the Christian ideal, and they had become one of the most pronounced "protestant" sects of the time and were anathematized repeatedly by the Popes. During the Papal vacancy the Spirituals had prospered and become more strident. Christendom had apostatized, and they were the heralds of a new religion, revealed to Francis of Assisi. This arrogant Papacy and priesthood must disappear before true religion can flourish.